No. 19: 🧢💪🏼🛋
The first man you ever sleep with is an Abercrombie & Fitch model.
You don’t have sex. But you sleep. Well, he sleeps. It’s almost dawn and you’ve barely slept a wink.
His swagger is the first thing you notice about him, limbs drawling like Western twang. He crosses your threshold in faded jeans and a plain white tee. His smile stupifies you. You are instantly infatuated and know within minutes that you will never date. This friend of your roommate’s boyfriend smokes weed, swears liberally, and drinks beer by the six-pack. Even if he is a Christian, he’s not the kind you know your future husband will be. Yet here you are trying not to stare at him and damning his dimples to hell.
You hope he’s a douchebag. Alas, he’s easy to like with a redneck vibe contrasting all too intriguingly with his debonair good looks. He’s a Greek god in a trucker hat. Exactly your type. He sits on the futon you rent as a bed for $450 a month and you have the sudden urge to straddle his lap just to feel the warmth of his chest through the cotton of his t-shirt. Instead, you make small talk with someone far less fascinating. But your eyes keep going to back to him, to Travis, to the way the candlelight glints off the stubble of his perfectly square chin.
How he ends up in your bed is an accident. Kind of. You protested. A little. But it’s past two in the morning and his ride, your roommate’s boyfriend, isn’t driving them all the way back to Whittier. Your roommate and her boyfriend don’t want to share her bedroom with Travis, so, would you mind if he just crashed in the living room with you?
“Don’t worry,” Travis says, his eyes shining like the blue of a flame. “I’ll be a perfect gentleman. I’ll even keep my clothes on.”
His smile taunts you. No one should be allowed to have a smile that perfect.
You suppose Travis could sleep on the floor, but the carpet reeks of spilled beer and itches your feet with ingrained chips. You can’t let this golden man sleep on a floor so vile when your futon is big enough for two.